What Is PictBridge?
PictBridge is a photography industry standard that allows printing directly from a camera or a memory card without an intermediary computer. PictBridge, a Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA) standard, is supported by almost all major camera manufacturers. In addition, it is implemented directly in printers by many major printer manufacturers. Printing a photograph from a PictBridge enabled camera with a PictBridge enabled printer is as simple as either plugging the camera into the printer or inserting the camera's memory card in the printer.
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Getting Data to the Printer
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Getting data from your camera to the printer is often as simple as plugging your camera in to the printer, browsing to the file you want to print, and sending the file via a USB cable to the printer. Some printers have card slots for memory cards and a small LCD screen to locate images. In these printers, insert your card in to the appropriate card slot and use the printer's LCD screen and built-in buttons to locate the photographs to be printed.
Color Fidelity
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Part of the PictBridge protocol defines the color space, usually sRGB, for both the camera and printer. Ensuring that the camera's color space matches the printer's ensures that the colors produced by the printer are very close to the colors captured by the camera.
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Media Type
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Some printers automatically sense the paper type. With other printers, the paper type must be set manually if something other than the printer's standard paper type is used.
Information Exchange
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One of the steps in the exchange process of PictBridge enabled cameras and printers is a comparison of capabilities. For example, some cameras might support AdobeRGB color space, while the printer may only support sRGB. In cases like this, the system would ask the user if converting the image to sRGB color space for printing is acceptable. The conversion would result in a slightly different color balance in the final print.
Other Devices Supporting PictBridge
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Other devices that often offer PictBridge support are cell phones, camcorders and some image capture devices. If a device is PictBridge compliant, simply plug the device in to a PictBridge printer to create photographic stills.
Potential Issues With PictBridge
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By bypassing the computer, digital photographs are printed with no enhancements. Simple digital enhancements like level adjustments or simple adjustments to brightness and contrast can dramatically improve a digital photograph. By printing without this step, PictBridge photographic prints are often not as aesthetically good as prints created using basic image processing built in to many camera's bundled software.
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Resources
- Photo Credit Photo: Rodolfo Clix, stock.xchng
